The Thirteenth Apostle

by Michel Benoît

  57

  Egypt, second to seventh centuries

  Forced by the war to leave Pella, the Nazoreans were welcomed by the Arabs in the Bakka oasis, where they settled. But the second generation found the austerity of the desert of Arabia difficult to live in: some of them decided to carry on to Egypt. They moved to a place north of Luxor, a village in the jebel El-Tarif called Nag Hammadi. Here they formed a community kept together by the memory of the thirteenth apostle and his teaching. And by his epistle, of which every family possessed a copy.

  They soon came into conflict with Christian missionaries from Alexandria, whose Church was undergoing rapid expansion. Christianity was indeed spreading across the Empire with all the impetuosity of a forest fire: the Nazoreans, who refused to accept the divinity of Jesus, were forced to submit – or disappear.

  Transform Jesus into the Christ-God? Be unfaithful to the epistle? Never – they were persecuted by the Christians. From Alexandria came orders written in Coptic: this epistle must be destroyed, in Egypt and everywhere else in the Empire. Each time a Nazorean family was driven out into the desert, where death awaited them, their house was searched and the letter of the thirteenth apostle destroyed. It spoke of a tomb containing the bones of Jesus, somewhere in the desert of Idumaea – but Jesus’s tomb needs to remain empty, so that the Christ may live.

  However, one single copy did escape the persecutors and reached the Library at Alexandria, where it was buried away among the five hundred thousand volumes of that eighth wonder of the world.

  Shortly after the year 200, a young Alexandrinian by the name of Origen started to frequent the Library with great assiduity. He was a tireless researcher, and he was fascinated by the person of Christ. He had a prodigious memory.

  * * *

  When he became a teacher, Origen was persecuted by his bishop, Demetrius. This was due to jealousy: Origen’s charisma was luring the elite of Alexandria to hear him. But it was also due to mistrust, since Origen did not hesitate to use in his teaching texts that were forbidden by the Church. Finally, Demetrius drove him from Egypt and Origen took refuge in Caesarea, Palestine – but he took his prodigious memory with him. As for the letter of the thirteenth apostle, it remained buried in the huge library, known to nobody: there are few scholars that have the genius of an Origen.

  When, in 641, Alexandria fell into the hands of the Muslims, General Amr ibn al-As ordered all the books to be burned, one by one. “If they are in agreement with the Koran,” he proclaimed, “they are superfluous. If they are not in agreement, they are dangerous.” For six months, the memory of antiquity heated the boilers in the public baths.

  By burning the Library of Alexandria, the Muslims had achieved what the Christians had never succeeded in doing: now there was not a single copy of the epistle anywhere to be found.

  Except for the original, still buried in a jar protected by the sand, on the left as you go into one of the caves looking out over the ruins of Qumran.

  58

  “So, have you found anything?”

  Leeland, his face looking tense, had just arrived in the studio. Next to the computer, several sheets of paper were lying scattered. Nil seemed tired; without replying, he went over to the window and glanced out. Then he came back to his seat, resolved to ignore the warnings of Breczinsky and to tell his friend everything.

  “After you’d left, I started to look in the biggest libraries in the world. Around midday, I came across the librarian from Heidelberg, who has lived in Rome. We started to chat online, and he told me that the Dewey classification probably came from – guess where?”

  “From the Library of San Girolamo, and that’s why you rushed back there!”

  “I should have thought – it was the last library that Andrei used before his death: he came across a book and jotted down the details on what he had at hand, his diary – probably intending to consult the work a second time. And then he hastily left Rome, leaving the now superfluous diary behind him.”

  Leeland sat next to Nil. His eyes were shining.

  “And you’ve found the book?”

  “The San Girolamo Library was built up out of odds and ends, following the whims of the successive librarians who followed each other in quick succession. You can find something of everything there. But the books are more or less all catalogued, and I did indeed discover the one that had attracted Andrei’s attention, a catena by Eusebius of Caesarea – a rare edition from the seventeenth century, I’d never heard of it.”

  Leeland asked, in some embarrassment:

  “Excuse me, Nil, I’ve forgotten pretty much everything except my music. What’s a catena?”

  “In the third century there was a fierce struggle over Jesus’s divinity, which the Church was seeking to impose. They were destroying all the texts they could find that didn’t conform to the new dogma. After condemning Origen, the Church methodically burnt all of his writings. Eusebius of Caesarea greatly admired the Alexandrine, who died in his city. He wanted to save what he could of his work, but – so as to avoid being condemned in his turn – he chose excerpts from it and had them circulated. He arranged them one after the other like the links of a chain: a catena. Later on they picked up on his idea, and many ancient works are now accessible to us only through these excerpts. Andrei guessed that this unfamiliar catena might contain passages from Origen that were barely known. He sought, and he found.”

  “Found what?”

  “A phrase in Eusebius that had hitherto passed unnoticed. In one of his now lost works, Origen said that he had seen, in the Library of Alexandria, a mysterious epistola abscondita apostoli tredicesimi: the secret – or hidden – epistle of a thirteenth apostle, which would provide proof that Jesus was not divine in nature. Andrei must have suspected the existence of this epistle – he had vaguely alluded to it in my presence. I can see he was looking for it, since he took care to note that unexpected and welcome reference.”

  “What credit can we give an isolated phrase in a minor text that has been forgotten?”

  Nil rubbed his chin.

  “You’re right,” he said, “this mere link in a chain is of no use by itself. But remember: in his posthumous note, Andrei suggested bringing together the four leads he had found. I’ve been mulling over the second sentence in the Coptic manuscript I found in the Abbey for weeks and weeks – the sentence that reads: ‘Let the epistle be everywhere destroyed, so that the place may remain in place’. Thanks to Origen, I think I’ve finally got it.”

  “A new code?”

  “Not at all. At the beginning of the third century, the Church was putting the final touches to the dogma of the Incarnation that would be proclaimed at the Council of Nicaea, and it was seeking to eliminate everything that might oppose it. This fragment of a Coptic manuscript – which had alerted Andrei – is probably what’s left of a directive from Alexandria, ordering this epistle to be destroyed wherever it was found. Finally, there is a play on words on a Coptic term which I have translated, faute de mieux, by ‘place’, but which may also mean ‘assembly’. In Greek, the official language of Alexandria, ‘assembly’ is ekklesia – the Church. The meaning of the sentence then becomes clear: this epistle must be everywhere destroyed, so that the Church may remain – so that the Church itself may not be annihilated! Only one of the two could survive: the letter of the thirteenth apostle or the Church.”

  Leeland gave a low whistle.

  “I see…”

  “Then the leads start to come together: the Germigny inscription confirms that in the eighth century, a thirteenth apostle was deemed to be so dangerous that he had to be got rid of for ever – alpha and omega – and we know that he is none other than the beloved disciple of the Fourth Gospel. Origen tells us that, in Alexandria, he saw an epistle written by that man, and the Coptic manuscript confirms that there were one or more copies at Nag Hammadi, since it orders them to be destroyed.”

  “But how did this epistle reach Nag Hammadi?”

  “We kno
w that the Nazoreans took refuge in Pella, in present-day Jordan, perhaps with the thirteenth apostle. After that, the trail goes cold. But Andrei had asked me to read the Koran – which he knew well – attentively. So I did, comparing several scientific translations that I had in the Abbey. I was surprised to find frequent mention of the nasara – the Arabic word for ‘Nazorean’ – who are the text’s main source of information on Jesus. After Pella, the disciples of the thirteenth apostle must have taken refuge in Arabia, where Muhammad would have known them. Why might they not have continued as far as Egypt? To Nag Hammadi, taking the copies of the epistle with them?”

  “The Koran… Do you really believe that the Nazorean fugitives had any influence on its author?”

  “Obviously: the text bears several traces of it. I’d rather not tell you any more just now: I still have one lead to follow, a work, or series of works, concerning the Templars, with an incomplete classification. We’ll talk about the Koran some other time, it’s late and I need to get back to San Girolamo.”

  Nil stood up, and again looked down into the street filled with shadows. As if talking to himself, he added:

  “So the thirteenth apostle wrote an apostolic epistle, to be everywhere destroyed, pursued by the Church’s hatred. What could there be in that letter that was so dangerous?”

  On the floor below, Mukhtar had been listening closely. When Nil mentioned the Koran, Muhammad and the Nazoreans, he swore.

  “Son of a dog!”

  59

  Desert of Arabia, September 622

  The man galloped on through the dark night. It was towards Medina that he was fleeing, as fast as his camel, foaming at the mouth, could carry him. This night would come to be known as the Hegira, marking the beginning of time for Muslims.

  He was fleeing from the oasis of Bakka, where he had been born into the prestigious clan of the Quraysh. He was fleeing because the Quraysh called themselves sons of Abraham, but in fact worshipped sacred stones.

  In this caravan halt in the middle of the desert, a community from the Jewish diaspora had been vegetating ever since the dim and distant past. At his head, an erudite and fiery rabbi dreamt of bringing the whole of Arabia round to Judaism by means of his rabbinical tradition. The young Arab had allowed himself to be convinced by this hot-headed visionary: he became his disciple, and quietly converted.

  But his rabbi asked more of him. The haughty Quraysh rejected the preaching of a Jew – perhaps they would listen to him, an Arab from the same clan as they were? Had he not become a Jew at heart? He wanted his disciple to proclaim what he taught him every day out in the open, in the oasis. “Tell them…” he kept saying. So that he would not forget anything of what he had heard, Muhammad took notes, which grew into quite a pile. They were in Arabic, since the rabbi had realized that one needed to speak to these men in their own language, and not in Hebrew.

  For the Quraysh, it was all to much: one of their own, Muhammad, was also seeking to destroy the cult of the sacred stones that lay at the source of their wealth! They might, at a push, have tolerated his becoming a Nazorean: these dissidents of Christianity had arrived several centuries ago, and their prophet Jesus wasn’t dangerous. The young Arab willingly listened to their teaching as well as that of his rabbi: seduced by Jesus, Muhammad would like to have grown closer to them. But the Quraysh did not give him time to do so, and drove him away.

  Now he was fleeing towards Medina: his only baggage was his precious notes. Written day by day, from what he heard his rabbi say: tell them…

  In Medina, he transformed himself into a warrior whose dazzling successes followed after one another, like flashes of lightning. He extended his power across a whole region and became a respected political leader. Laws were needed to organize those who joined him: he issued those laws, then wrote them down, and these pages joined the notes he had taken previously, building up day by day. Then he also started included anecdotes, accounts of his battles. His notes became a voluminous travel journal.

  When he wanted to enrol the Jews under his banner, they refused point-blank. He was furious, and drove them out of the city, turning instead to the Christians in the north. Yes, these would be glad to help him in his conquests, but on one condition: he should convert to Christianity and recognize the divinity of Jesus. Muhammad cursed them, and included them in the fierce hatred he felt for the Jews.

  Only the Nazoreans found grace in his eyes. And he filled his notebook with words of praise for them and their prophet Jesus.

  When he returned victorious to Bakka, Muhammad drew his sabre and swept away all the sacred stones of the idolaters. But he came to a halt before the icon of Jesus and his mother, whom the Nazoreans had always venerated. He thrust his sabre back into its sheath, and bowed deeply.

  Subsequently, the name “Bakka” underwent a slight transformation, as sometimes happens, and the oasis became generally known as “Mekka”.

  In other words, Mecca.

  Two generations later, the Caliph Uthman edited, in his own way, Muhammad’s travel journal, which he called the “Koran”, deeming it to have been written by Muhammad under the direct dictation of God. Ever since, nobody who wished to stay alive could question the divine nature of the Koran.

  Islam had never had its thirteenth apostle.

  60

  St Peter’s Square was filled with people and all the hustle and bustle of grand occasions. An immense portrait of the newly beatified man had been hung on the façade of the basilica. The cold was less intense and the weather was sunny, which made it possible for this beatification to be performed in the open air, with the two arms of Bernini’s colonnade embracing a motley, colourful crowd, delighted at the chance to see the Holy Father and to take part in one of Christianity’s great festivals.

  As Prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal Catzinger was officiating at the right hand of the Pope. He had been the driving force behind this beatification: next up was the founder of Opus Dei. The list of his supernatural virtues had been drawn up without any problem, but it was proving difficult to find the three miracles necessary for a canonization in accordance with the rules. Catzinger mechanically lifted one edge of the pontifical chasuble, which was slipping down as a result of the trembling which afflicted the aged pontiff. As the Pope pronounced the sacred words, the Cardinal smiled. “Miracles will be found. The first miracle of all is the permanence, across the centuries, of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

  Catzinger had been privileged to know the saint-in-waiting personally. Before founding Opus Dei, Escrivá de Balaguer had been an active militant in the Spanish Civil War, on Franco’s side; then he had been friends with a young officer in the Chilean Army, a certain Augusto Pinochet. His father would have subscribed to this canonization: he too had chosen the right side when he went to fight the Communists on the Eastern Front. To raise Escrivá de Balaguer to sainthood would be an act of justice towards his father, who had died for the West.

  Lost amid the mass of prelates lined up on their benches in front of the papal platform, in the humble place his rank as minutante gave him, Mgr Calfo enjoyed the caress of the sun and the beauty of the spectacle. “Only the Catholic Church is capable of orchestrating the encounter between the divine and the human in the midst of so much beauty, and for such huge crowds.” At the end of the ceremony, while the procession of dignitaries lined up behind the Pope, his eyes met those of the Cardinal, who nodded at him imperiously.

  An hour later, the two men were sitting face to face in Catzinger’s office. The latter’s face wore the expression it habitually did on bad days.

  “So then, Monsignor, where have we got to?”

  Unlike his Prefect, Calfo seemed very relaxed. Sonia had played her part in this: he found her to be a priestess expert in the cult of Eros, but also a person who was prepared to listen to him.

  “Your Eminence, we are making rapid progress. Father Nil is turning out to be gifted, very gifted, when it comes to research.”

  The Cardi
nal’s brow furrowed. Leeland’s reports were not only insipid, they were becoming more and more infrequent, and it was still too early to put pressure on Father Breczinsky: his grip on the Polish librarian was based on the obscure twists and turns of the human heart, and this was a lever he could use only once. And he needed to do it properly. But for now, Mgr Calfo held all the aces.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” Calfo pursed his fleshy lips. “He has found the trace of a lost apostolic writing, which would confirm his analyses of St John’s Gospel.”

  The Cardinal rose, motioned Calfo to follow him to the window and showed him St Peter’s Square. The papal platform was still in place, and thousands of pilgrims seemed to be turning round and round this nerve centre like the water in a funnel around the whirlpool drawing it in. The crowd seemed happy: one big family discovering the links that unite it and how vast it actually is.

  “Look at them, Monsignor. You and I are responsible for millions of believers like these, all of whom live in the hope of a resurrection made possible for them by the sacrifice of God incarnate. Is a single man going to undermine all that? We’ve never allowed it. Do you remember Giordano Bruno, a monk who was also very gifted when it came to research: he was burned half a mile away from here, on the Campo de’ Fiori, in spite of his Europe-wide fame. What is at stake is the very order of the world: yet again, a monk seems capable of overthrowing it. It isn’t possible for us – as it was in the past – to cure the body of the Church by cauterizing it with fire. But we need to bring Father Nil’s research to a quick end.”

  Calfo did not reply straight away. The Eleven at their meeting had approved his line of conduct: he was to say just enough to the Cardinal to make him afraid, but reveal nothing of the Society’s ultimate aims.

  “Your Eminence, I don’t think that’s necessary. He’s just an intellectual unaware of what he’s doing. In my view, we should let him carry on; we have the situation entirely in hand.”